FlashHarry:it's sad; there's an entire generation that has never heard an uncompressed piece of music.

Using the volume of sound waves to imprint onto a piece of vinyl is also compressed music. Speakers uncompress it in a certain way. To insist that music is only pure if it is provided through a certain medium is as absurd as insisting that you need $500 cables to provide quality.

There's far more damage done by the process of mastering by reducing the range of sound than there could ever be in your choice of compression media.

Gwendolyn:cannotsuggestaname: I have listened to music through some Beats headphones... and I'll take my Sennheiser 598's, for $100 less, any day of the week.

i have some JVC ones I paid like $20 for.

My to-go headphones that I've used for better than half a decade aren't in production anymore, which sucks. I can't stand earbuds, they hurt like a son of a biatch. I have these that I use at home and are fantastic, but nowhere near carry-able. I've used these, replacing every couple of years due to eventual damage. I think I'm on my fourth set now. The cost of the few left reflects the quality. Haven't tried their "updated" model it links to yet, but that earpiece doesn't look comfortable.

GAT_00:There's far more damage done by the process of mastering by reducing the range of sound than there could ever be in your choice of compression media.

the best human ears can only hear from 20 hz to 20k. a decent mastering engineer should be able to reproduce this range. but when you listen to a 256kbps MP3, you're losing a lot more of the information than if you listened to the original, even if it were recorded and not live.

FlashHarry:TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Yeah, because the RIAA curve required to make something reproducible on vinyl is so pure? You're fooling yourself.

where did i mention vinyl?

Let's put it this way:

Unless you've been to a live concert, everything you've every listened to in terms of reproduced music has not been anywhere near what the studio track started as, so complaining about "compressed music" is pointless.

I'm curious, what's the point of these head phones? Do they reduce the distortion of modern music that's recorded at such a volume that modern remasters are often useless EXCEPT as lower-quality MP3s? Do they just up the bass?

Or do they make ANYTHING sound better? It sounds like they don't do that...

Yesterday I got a pair of Bluetooth headphones that I bought from onesaleaday. I didn't expect anything too great, but I wanted another pair to use for when I am boxing. I bought a pair from Amazon that was pretty good, but these blow those out of the water. They have beautiful padding and their range even beats that of the [superior] pair that I paid a bit more to purchase.

So $20 for a generic pair that sounds great. I doubt that I could convince myself to spend $300 on a pair, regardless of who endorses them. Then again, I am not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. I just want cordless and comfortable with decent sound.

Beyond a certain point audiophilia is ridiculous. There is good, and then everything above that is your imagination.

I know, I know, unlike the couple studies where even self-described audiophiles swore they could tell and failed miserably in blind tests, the farkers reading this will insist that THEY have the superb superhuman skills to tell.

/I don't even listen to music, you lose so much by listening instead of reading the notes in their originally written format.

If I ever walked into the studio with a pair of Beats, they would laugh as hard as if I were wearing a pair of Hello Kittys.Besides, who wants phones that need batteries?They are the most counterfeited audio component in the world right now, because the people that buy them can't tell the difference anyway.

I've got a set of Vmoda Crossfades with partial metal construction on the cans and band attachment. Great sound and they're built like a tank, the cable is wrapped in kevlar for durability. Excellent sound reproduction at all frequencies, and they can produce enough volume that I could use them as desktop speakers, without any audible distortion (I run my soundcard output at just 15% with them plugged in and it's plenty loud).

And those only cost me a hundred bucks. If I was going to spend the kind of money for Beats, I'd buy some of those Audio-Technica ones with the wooden cans.

That's me Tommy. I have MDR-ZX100. I guess that's the model Wal-Mart went to. I had been through 2-3 pair of the MDR-V150 prior to that. 20 bucks. I have nice boards at work, so they do the trick just fine. I thought the cord was too long on the 150's, too short on the new ones, but they swivel and seem tougher. And they fit about the same.

But while we're on the subject, I wish the industry as a whole would settle on 1/8" jacks. I hate having to keep up with the adapter so I can use them at work. iPod, PC, whatever else, 1/8" Broadcast stuff, 1/4". Why?

What makes me lol is people with high end stereo equipment who blast satellite radio through it. I'm amazed every day people willingly pay real money to listen to that tinny underwater sound with absolutely no dynamic range or stereo separation at all.